Kanye West revealed on 'Yeezus' tour

Kanye West does a surprise performance of “Bound 2” on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” in September. West brings his concert tour to the AT&T Center on Sunday.

More Information

In concert

Who: Kanye West, with Kendrick Lamar opening

When: 7 p.m. Sunday

Where: AT&T Center, East Houston Street at AT&T Center Parkway

Tickets: $37.50-$97.50 through Ticketmaster

For openers: Kendrick Lamar

His mixtapes brought him street cred and critical acclaim; his indie album showed him to be one of the top iTunes artists. With his major-label debut, “Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City,” Lamar continued his impressive run with hit singles “Swimming Pools (Drank),” “Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe” and “Poetic Justice,” plus lots of love from MTV.

GQ magazine named him rapper of the year in a cover story, which somehow created some controversy. All in all, not bad for a straight-A student fresh out of Compton.

That is what hip-hop fans will see at Kanye West's highly anticipated concert at AT&T Center on Sunday with Kendrick Lamar.

The superstar rapper comes out from behind the masks (he performs behind a handful of them for most of his show) as he promotes his latest album, “Yeezus.”

The Atlanta Journal Constitution's Music Scene blogger Melissa Ruggieri said it's the prerogative of such an artist.

“West's 'Yeezus' tour is more performance art than traditional concert,” Ruggieri reported after a recent concert.

“And, like most performance artists, from Yoko Ono to Björk to Joaquin Phoenix, part of it is creatively brilliant, but most of it is self-indulgent ridiculousness.”

He's been known to famously disagree with any such dis, but West admits to as much in his provocative single “Bound 2” (its music video spoofed by Seth Rogen and James Franco as “Bound 3”).

“I know I got a bad reputation,” West raps.

But there is a reason for the concert spectacle (he brings his own mountain, folks) and it's not just to sermonize.

Maybe it's all the genius talk that will come. Maybe it's the Auto-Tuned egomania. After all, “Yeezus” is considered by many critics to be the album of the year.

Maybe it's just one celebrity trying to keep his own celebrity from being eclipsed by the celebrity of his celebrity wife, Ruggieri noted.

Many in the audience at Atlanta's Philips Arena last week were just as interested in his fiancée Kim Kardashian (West's naked co-star in the video for “Bound 2”) and their baby, North West.

It'll be the same story here.

Russell Rush at Mix 96.1 said West is bigger than the rap game and “beyond huge.”

“More than anything, we've gotten more phone calls from people wanting to know if Kim and the baby will be traveling with Kanye when he's here,” said Rush.

New York Daily News music critic Jim Farber predicted that West's latest album will receive a lot of love when Grammy nominations are announced Friday. He has already won more than 20.

“His album inspired the year's best reviews. It also made the boldest sonic statement, at least among top releases,” Farber wrote.

But music critic Sean Daly at the Tampa Daily Times would add a caveat when it comes to West's concerts, describing a recent one as “a two-hour-plus mélange of well-choreographed ego, as controlled as the chaos in (West's) solipsistic brain can get. It ended with a prayer but started with a tantrum.

“He is polarizing, and fascinating, and creatively daring, and frustrating. He is beloved and berated with equal measure, usually for the same reasons,” Daly noted. “Predictably unpredictable, the show was all over the place. And, for better or bonkers, it was all Kanye West.”